Tag Archives: old crow medicine show

Chuck D, the founder of influential rap group Public Enemy, is the latest artist to lend his support to the Save WRVU campaign.

The Vanderbilt University Student Communications Board, which owns the station at 91.1 on your FM dial, is considering selling their on-air license, and the notion has caused quite a hubbub amongst students and supporters of the long-running college station. While in town for his performance at Vanderbilt's Rites of Spring festival, Chuck D visited with volunteers and recorded several promos urging students to “Fight the Power” and stay on air.

Click the image for a slide show of Mumford & Sons and the Apache Relay performing February 5 in Nashville (photo: Edward O'Day/The Apache Relay)

Chalk it up to just another one of those nights that could only happen in Nashville. Where else would you find major Hollywood movie stars popping into a random house party to catch a secret show from a Grammy nominated band?

On Saturday night, local guitarist Mike Harris decided to invite a couple hundred of his closest pals over to his Granny White abode (referred to as "The Parsonage" for those in the know) for a live show featuring his band, The Apache Relay, former tour mates, fiddle player Ross Holmes and banjoist Matt Menefee and a very special surprise performance from Grammy-nominated best new artist group, Mumford & Sons.

It was quite the change of venue for Mumford & Sons to go from a huge set at Bonnaroo last year as well as a sold out show at War Memorial Auditorium in November to some dude's cramped, dark, threadbare basement near Belmont. But Harris and his friends had supported the group over the years, striking up a close friendship, and it didn’t go unnoticed by them even though they were now internationally acclaimed.Continue reading →

Los Angeles-based producer/musician/satellite radio host Don Was has been coming to Nashville for two decades to make music, and he’s amused that the 2010 success of Kings of Leon, Ke$ha, Paramore and other acts is causing some fans and music industry executives to take notice of Music City as something other than Country Music City.

“It’s one of the hippest places in the country,” said Was, who this year produced Elizabeth Cook’s Welder, which appeared on Rolling Stone’s 30 best albums list for 2010. “It would be as inaccurate to define Nashville by the commercial country industry that operates within the city limits as it would be to describe the Los Angeles area solely as the home of Disneyland. Remember, in L.A., Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Kardashians all live within a five-mile radius of each other. How does one categorize that?”

Was, the Rolling Stones producer who came off much better in Keith Richards’ autobiography than did Mick Jagger, said, “In the last couple of years, I’ve recorded in Nashville with the likes of Todd Snider, Elizabeth Cook, Old Crow Medicine Show, Delbert McClinton, Cowboy Jack Clement and Buddy Miller. Where else are you going to find talented, groovy folks like that concentrated in such a small area?”

Click to see a photo gallery from Saturday at Bonnaroo, including the Dave Rawlings Machine (this photo: Sanford Myers/The Tennessean).

The Bonnaroo 2010 faithful might've been letting all the sunny fun catch up to them a bit Saturday, as a large percentage of the Dave Rawlings Machine's That Tent crowd stretched supine on blankets or right on the sand to watch and listen.

While the Nashville crew does play acoustic-led music -- acoustic guitars, fiddle, stand-up bass -- they're far from somnolent, layering thick, full harmonies while Rawlings leads with his fingers, quick and tasteful over the frets, his body twisting in that serpentine emoting that he does.

They played some pensive, strummy songs -- "I Hear Them All," which Rawlings wrote with Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor (and which Old Crow fans would recognize from that band's Big Iron World), the lushly harmonied, emotive "Ruby" -- and they spent plenty of time letting loose.

"I wouldn't feel right if we didn't do a little bit of... maybe a Bill Monroe song," Rawlings said from the stage before the band moved into "I'm On My Way Back To the Old Home."

It was clear how much that kind of stuff fires Rawlings up, as he dug his picking hand hard and heavy into the strings, the decibels almost doubling and his head bobbling with a contagious glee. The crowd picked up on it, certainly, howling while he soloed.Continue reading →

John Prine plays the 2010 Bonnaroo festival, set for June 10-13 in Manchester.

The young guy behind the counter at Arnold’s Country Kitchen doesn’t have to ask for John Prine’s order: It’s Friday, so it’s meatloaf, and some things never change.

Other things do. In his 20s, John Prine wrote songs while delivering the U.S. mail and played those songs at coffee houses and bars. At 63, he is one of the nation’s most revered singer-songwriters, and a performer at youth-oriented rock festival Bonnaroo (June 10-13 in Manchester). He figures those mail route songs should work nicely in front of a festival crowd, and more than 40 years on stages small and large have imparted him with a sense about such things.

Rawlings’ graceful guitar work and harmony vocals have long been a central element in Gillian Welch’s sound. For his debut as Dave Rawlings Machine, he enlisted the aid of Welch and Nashville string band Old Crow Medicine Show, and he recorded at historic RCA Studio B and Woodland Sound Studios.

The resulting nine-song set, A Friend Of A Friend, is up for album of the year at the AMA’s show, set to take place Thursday, Sept. 9 at the Ryman Auditorium. Rawlings also received nods in the top instrumentalist and song of the year (for “Ruby,” written with Welch) categories, and Dave Rawlings Machine is up for duo/group of the year as well.

Rosanne Cash’s The List, an album inspired by a list of essential country songs given her by father Johnny Cash, is a top album nominee, as is Ray Wylie Hubbard’s cumbersomely titled A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C) and Patty Griffin’s Downtown Church, recorded in the sanctuary at Nashville’s Downtown Presbyterian Church.Continue reading →

“Is that the word for it? ‘Untethered?’” asked Elizabeth Cook, nestled into a corner booth at Smeraldo’s restaurant in Madison.

And “untethered” is the word for it, kind of. After a decade of country radio mindfulness, she is feeling a particular kind of freedom. Gone are the days of major label meetings, in which expenses were generously allocated for wardrobe and video shoots, but not for touring. She’s no longer concerned with finding a way to convince radio programmers into thinking her music somehow fits alongside Rascal Flatts or Taylor Swift. Produced by Don Was and recorded without notions of formula following, her new album Welder is as jagged as it is rooted. It is its own thing altogether.

“I grew up with mainstream country music, watching awards shows and listening to my mom singing Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn songs,” Cook said. “And the safe thing for me to do would have been to make a nostalgia country record. But for the first time, I’m beginning to approach some territory I’ve been trying to get to. I’ve started to get into a more pure and poignant and original territory.”

Much of that originality and poignancy comes courtesy of a family to which she remains inextricably tethered, though that family is still reeling from the 2008 death of her mother, Joyce Cook. Welder finds Cook delivering the bookend song of her “Mama” series: There was “Mama You Wanted to Be a Singer Too” on 2002’s Warner Bros. album, Hey Y’all, then “Mama’s Prayers” on 2007’s Balls, and now there is “Mama’s Funeral.”Continue reading →

Famed singer, songwriter, producer, raconteur (the storytelling kind, not the band that Jack White's in), publisher and mentor Cowboy Jack Clement headlines an evening of prime Americana music Thursday, April 29 at the Belcourt Theatre.

Clement has enlisted a bunch of musical friends for the One Bright Night For Human Rights concert, which benefits the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. Old Crow Medicine Show is on the bill, as are Marley's Ghost, Shawn Camp, Billy Burnette and Cowboy's Ragtime Band (that's the ensemble backing Clement and featuring a bevy of fine players).

Everyone on the bill has worked with Clement on stage or in the studio.